


Losing Battle

by combefeyrac



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Graphic Depictions of Illness, HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS Crisis, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Multi, Reader's vote on if this will end happily or not, Sick Character, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29790192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/combefeyrac/pseuds/combefeyrac
Summary: In the years leading up to 1980, the Musain served as home base for a ragtag bunch of high-schoolers calling themselves the ABC. This story takes place in 1982, and though the members remain the same, the Musain serves as headquarters to the GMHC. This is a story about love and loss; and to what extremes the two can wreak havoc.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables), Grantaire & Éponine Thénardier
Kudos: 2





	Losing Battle

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work in progress, and I will do my best to have a new chapter posted weekly (excluding this week) on Fridays. Tags will be added as the story is written!

17 September 1982

It was nearing midnight, yet Enjolras was still in the makeshift board room, sitting at one end of the large table with one hand in his hair and the other leafing through the medical bills he’d yet to sort with Combeferre. _Someone has to do it_ , he kept telling himself. _Someone has to do it, and better it be me_.

The truth was, they didn’t have the finances. Courfeyrac knew they didn’t have the money to cover this stuff but he still told the girl not to worry about a thing, that he had “friends in good places”. Bastard. Enjolras had half a mind to call him up, make him come back and budget his own mess. They didn’t have the time or the resources to be helping a girl who, quite frankly, had done it to herself.

_No. That’s not fair_. He shook his head slightly, blinking the tears of a yawn away. He was exhausted. Not that he did much more than paperwork today, but the weight and dread resting on his shoulders only grew heavier, at much the same rate as the rapidly rising death toll. It was aging him – there was a time when he could have passed for a teenager, but these days he swore he could see gray at his temples; though the rest of them told him he was imagining it.

“Shit,” he muttered, as a couple passed laughing by the slightly open window. They wouldn’t come in, he knew, but it reminded him that Magnon had given him the key hours earlier, telling him to lock up once she left. Of course, he’d gotten sidetracked planning meetings and press conferences, and the door to the café below was still unlocked. Enjolras quickly set the bills down and grabbed the keyring from the table, and started towards the staircase. Halfway across the room he paused; looked down at the key, then towards the nest he’d created over the past 6 hours, then out the window and down the street, where a few drops of rain had just started to fall. Before he could stop it, another yawn came over him, tears brimming once again at his reddened eyes.

Yeah, he thought, you’re not getting anything else done tonight.

He turned back towards the table and started gathering up the various files and timetables he had been trying to coordinate, and put them neatly back into their respective binders. He left a quick note for Combeferre about possible correspondence with the hospital – he thought perhaps they might be more lenient of late fees if they were connected with an organization. That could be a Combeferre problem – Enjolras preferred to deal with more pressing matters than a street urchin’s medical bills. This worked well for them, as no one else really had the drive that Enjolras had to constantly organize protests and political meetings, nor the bravery to call said politicians out on their bullshit. On live television. The rest of them still haven’t let him live that down.

Head stuck reliving old moments, Enjolras mechanically collected his jacket and bag, checked his pocket for the key to the café, and shut the second floor down for another night. As he locked the door behind him, he silently thanked Magnon for the hundredth time for letting them take over the second floor of the Musain for a laughable price – laughable, because she didn’t demand a price at all, but every month the boys scrounged up what they could for the woman. She was an angel in the flesh when most landlords would have been charging them double for a space to gather because of their organization. Magnon had opened the store a couple times to some less than savoury graffiti on her door and windows and had asked for the boys’ help in cleaning it off, but nothing more.

Pulling once on the door for good measure, Enjolras nodded his head, turned, and started the trek back to his flat.

  


Grantaire held Éponine in his arms as tightly as he would dare, fearful he’d break her frail body. He struggled to remember the Éponine he once knew – strong arms, full cheeks, dexterous hands, infectious smile – none of these images came easy to him anymore when he was faced so often with what she’d become.

They lid in Grantaire’s single bed with every blanket he owned atop them, and while Grantaire was drenched in sweat, Éponine’s teeth were audibly chattering. He couldn’t remember when he’d started mumbling reassurances to her, _it’s okay love, you’re okay, it’ll pass_ , but he couldn’t stop now. She was crying, had been for hours, and every now and then would make the most mournful sounds that Grantaire couldn’t help but wince at. He might have realized he was crying if he had a single thought left to spare for himself.

The girl was a pitiful shell of the woman she once was. Her tan skin was now marred with purple and red lesions, her cheeks and eyes sunken, her ribcage jutting out more than it did when she was homeless. Her hair, once thick and silky, was now dull and thin, and tangled now that Grantaire had given up trying to brush it. The last time he tried, he ripped a clump of it out and almost made himself throw up. Taking care of Éponine, (though let it be known he wouldn’t trade it for the world) was turning more into taking care of a rotting corpse. AIDS was an ugly, rotten disease.

Éponine stirred, and Grantaire loosed his grip on her. She’d been facing away from him but struggled to turn over, and once he realized, he sat up and helped. God she’s getting light, he thought, but quickly tried to dispel the idea from his mind. Éponine, now on her right side facing him, tugged lightly at his sleeve, and Grantaire lid back down next to her, brow to brow.

“Taire,” she whispered, the sound barely leaving her lips. “Are you-” She turned her head away to cough, then came back. “Are you gonna be okay, when I’m gone?”

Grantaire laughed, nervously. “Whadd’ya mean? You’re not going anywhere without me. Who’s gonna be your human crutch?”

“I’m… serious, I don’t… ‘M gonna die soon, y’know.” Her words were breathy, barely getting them out before another coughing fit befell her. That would have been the pneumonia, one of a thousand ailments her broken immune system was fighting off.

“You’re not gonna die. It’s almost been 2 years since this shit started, they’re gonna find a cure before you know it. You’re not gonna die.”

Her face fell. “If I don’t die soon, I’m going to make it happen myself. I’m already… Jesus Christ, I- I can barely even-”

“Shh, Ep, catch your breath.” Grantaire moved his hand to her hair and gently brushed through the strands, careful not to tug on any knots. What was earlier silent tears from Éponine turned into body-wracking sobs, and Grantaire couldn’t help but think what the normal Éponine would do if she saw herself now, crying outwardly in front of another human being. It was almost enough to laugh at if the situation wasn’t so awful.

Once she caught her breath, she took a deep one and looked Grantaire straight in the eyes. “Tell me you’ll be… okay. Tell me I can go, and, and not have to worry, if you’ll be-” she gasped, “okay.” Grantaire caught a tear from the end of her nose and wiped it on the blanket, only for another to take its place.

“Please, Grantaire. My whole body… hurts. I can’t hardly breathe. I’m barely… barely in my right mind, sometimes.”

“I know, doll, like right now, you’re talking all kinds of nonsense, I-”

“No!” she yelled, though it could hardly be classified as a yell, it still caught Grantaire off guard. “I’m done, R. I want to go… to sleep, now.”

Grantaire could only nod his head as he held back a floodgate of tears. He grabbed her head and pulled her to his chest, entwining his legs with hers, trying to get as close to her as he possibly could. Even though he did his best to deny reality, subconsciously he knew this might be one of the last coherent conversations he’d have with the girl.

He adjusted their positioning slightly, losing himself to thoughts about life without her, before a gruesome and pained scream tore him back to reality. It took him a second to realize it was Éponine.

“Hey, hey!” he whispered frantically. Éponine only groaned in response as he released her slightly, taking his hand from her back. It was then he realized that his hand was wet with _something_ – when he wiped it on the white sheets, he realized it was blood.

_From her back?_ was his first thought, so he gently rose up from lying down to peer over her body – and nearly threw up right there and then. Éponine’s skin had begun to stick to the sheet below, and was sloughing off her in a horrific mess of blood and pus. The straps of her bra looked now as if they had dug into her flesh, as they too were covered in the same mess. She was past the point of crying now, only whimpering, and mumbling incoherently. Grantaire was terrified to move the slightest muscle, for fear of ripping off more of her skin.

“Hey, Ponine,” he started, getting up off the bed as gently as he could, “I’m calling an ambulance-”

“No!” she cried, followed by another scream of pain as she tried, and failed, to grab him.

Grantaire winced, but he wasted no time rushing out of the room to the phone. It broke his heart to leave her alone like that, even for a moment, even to help her. He ran down the hall and swung himself around the doorframe to the kitchen to the phone. He could barely stop shaking long enough to dial three lousy numbers.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“Yes, hello, my friend,” he sputtered, “my friend is sick – dying, her skin’s coming off in, in pieces, sticking to the sheets, everywhere, I-I can’t move her, I don’t know what to do-”

“Sir,” the operator interrupted, “did you say her _skin_ is coming off?”

”Yes, yes, her skin, i-it stuck to the sheets as I turned her over,” he explained. “Please, she’s in so much pain, and I don’t-”

“Sir, where are you located?” she asked calmly.

“1528 Lansdowne, apartment C, towards the East Quarter – please,” he begged, “hurry.”

“Emergency services are en route – do you know the nature of your friend’s illness?”

Grantaire laid his head against the wall in relief. “She has AIDS, ma’am. She hasn’t been well for months.”

There was a very slight pause on the end of the line, nearly unnoticeable. “An ambulance should be at your location in no more than 10 minutes.”

The operator asked a few more questions before instructing him to hang up and go back with Éponine, in case anything was to get worse. In his haste, the phone never made it onto the receiver and instead clattered against the wall. He stepped into the room, where Éponine was curled with her shredded back to him, just as he’d left her. It was a dismal sight.

“Ponine, there’s an ambulance on the way,” he said, kneeling down by the bed. She responded with silence.

“Listen,” he started, “I know this isn’t what you wanted, but at this point… hey, Ponine?”

Nothing.

“Éponine,” he said, louder. She made no sound.

“Éponine, wake up!” Grantaire flew up from the floor onto the bed, grabbing her shoulder and shaking with no regard for the wounds on her back. “Hey. Hey! Hey, hey, hey, wake up now,” he pleaded.

He rolled her onto her back, where he was able to see her eyes, half lidded and glassy. Unmoving.

“No, no, no no no,” he muttered frantically, still shaking her with as much force as he could muster. He shouted and shook her for what seemed like an eternity, begging whatever higher powers out there to let there be some kind of miracle, like in the movies. Let her gasp and sputter for breath, take the clouds out of her eyes.

It was quite a while before his arms and resolve grew tired. “Wake up,” he moaned, “wake up, wake up, God, please! There’s an ambulance coming, there’s an… there’s a…”

He trailed off as a lump formed in his throat, tears brimming the corners of his eyes. He could finally see once he’d stopped how the blood had drained from her face, from the moment he turned her over ‘til now. He let out a single, broken sob at the horrid sight of his best friend (and his only “real” friend, in his own mind), completely and undeniably dead. The sound of a distant siren was the only thing that interrupted the sound of Grantaire quietly crying into his sweater.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer - I don't have an editor, so please let me know of any errors. I haven't decided exactly how sad I want to make this, so if you want a say, leave me a comment!


End file.
